The 2017 Silicon Valley Robot Block Party set a new high for attendance with over 1000 robot fans plus investors, exhibitors and media. "Robotics has emerged as one of the most important technologies in the 21st century impacting on almost every part of society from self-driving cars, to improved outcomes in medicine, to taking care of our aging parents to teaching our next generation of engineers and scientists," says John Dulchinos, VP Strategic Capabilities, Jabil. Silicon Valley has become one of the leading areas for the advancement and commercialization of robotics technologies." It would be hard to pick a star of the show when watching the smiles on children's faces throughout the day. There were big robots, small robots, mobile robots, robot arms, humanoid robots, toy robots, robots you could ride on or in and even robot insects.

Amazon is the exception to nearly every rule in business. Rising from humble beginnings as a Seattle-based internet bookstore, Amazon has grown into a propulsive force in at least five different giant industries: retail, logistics, consumer technology, cloud computing, and most recently, media and entertainment. The company has had its share of missteps -- the expensive Fire phone flop comes to mind -- but is also rightly known for strokes of strategic genius that have put it ahead of competitors in promising new industries. This was the case with the launch of cloud business AWS in the mid-2000s, and more recently the surprising consumer hit in the Echo device and its Alexa AI assistant. Today's Amazon is far more than just an "everything store," it's a leader in consumer-facing AI and enterprise cloud services. And its insatiable appetite for new markets mean competitors must always be on guard against its next moves.

In late 2015, mandatory drone registration went into effect in the United States. Since then, anyone who wants to fly a drone (or model aircraft) weighing over 0.55 pound (0.25 kilogram) must register with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to receive a unique identification number. This number needs to be placed on the drone, but there is no requirement for the tiny aircraft to broadcast signals to allow for remote identification. That might change in the future. The FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016 [PDF] required the FAA administrator to "convene industry stakeholders to facilitate the development of consensus standards for remotely identifying operators and owners of unmanned aircraft systems and associated unmanned aircraft."

Any article on the web that starts with terms like "Machine Learning" and "Artificial Intelligence," more or less drops us hints about the future. Although it all seems like preparing a foundation for the time ahead, things have started picking up pace already. It's difficult to deny that even though machine learning and A.I. sound more like future technologies, we all have been using it already. Some of the notable examples include Google Home, Amazon Echo, Google Photos etc. What's more, smartphone manufacturers are trying their luck nowadays with these technologies. Care to think of Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and newborn Samsung Bixby? It often reminds me of what Elon Musk once said, "Great companies are built on great products."

Marib, now under the control of President Abd-Rabu Mansour Hadi's internationally recognized government, is one of several regions where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its local affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia, operate and is east of the capital Sanaa - controlled by the dominant Houthi group.

Researchers used a drone to capture rare aerial images of blue whale's feeding. Blue whales, the largest creature on Earth, get their energy by consuming krill - some of the smallest animals on Earth. With the drone, the researchers were able to gain an aerial perspective of a blue whale on its side, lunging to eat a large plume of krill in one big bite. In the video taken in New Zealand, the whale sees that there is a large krill patch in the water. Dr Leigh Torres, Assistant Professor at Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Institute, said that the behavior'is something we often see from the boat, and we see splashing and we can tell the animal turns on its side but - but with the drone we were able to get this remarkable new perspective'.

Built with artificial intelligence, the Hover Camera Passport selfie drone detects and follows users. Source: Zero Zero Robotics At this year's CES, a little company named Zero Zero Robotics demonstrated a flying camera drone that hovers near you taking pictures and autonomously detects, follows and records your movements. That selfie drone, called Hover Camera Passport, is now available and just picked up a huge backer in the form of Apple Inc. The smartphone giant has started exclusively selling the drone online and in its Apple stores in five countries. The Hover Camera Passport is powered by internally-developed artificial intelligence that the company says allows consumers to operate the drone camera out of the box and works for both indoor and outdoor environments.

Cloud computing is all well and good for enterprises with big-data applications and consumers with virtual assistants, but it runs into some limits in an isolated cornfield. On farms and other places far from powerful computers and network connections, there's a trend away from centralized computing even while most of the IT world is embracing it. In remote places, the internet of things requires local processing as well as data-center analysis. So-called edge computing is coming to industries including manufacturing, utilities, shipping, and oil and gas. Agriculture is getting it, too.

Inmates for years have thought of ingenious -- and sometimes very compromising ways -- to sneak contraband inside prison walls. They've bribed guards, used carrier pigeons, had relatives put the goods in body cavities and, of course, who can forget a classic routine: baking a file into a cake. But modern technology is quickly making life easier for inmates -- and less uncomfortable for family and friends -- looking to smuggle illicit goods onto prison grounds. Corrections officials across the U.S. have reported an uptick in the last few years of drones flying over penitentiary walls to deliver everything from cigarettes and pornography to drugs and weapons to inmates. Prison officials in Michigan last spring found a small toy drone on the grounds of the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center.

Getting supplies delivered to troops in remote areas is a big part of what the U.S. military does in terms of logistics. In many cases, it's too dangerous to send an airplane or helicopter, so the military is always looking for new ways of carrying out such resupply missions. Earlier this month at the Sea Air Space 2017 trade show in National Harbor, Md., we saw a new concept for remote resupply that the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory has been testing. The TACAD (TACtical Air Delivery) glider is a prototype for an unpowered drone that can fly huge distances to deliver up to 700 pounds (317 kilograms) of whatever you need with high accuracy, and then be abandoned where it lands without a second thought. The picture above is a small scale model of the TACAD drone glider that the Marines are planning on building.